Marin Voice: Hurricane Sandy offers painful lesson in climate change

HURRICANE SANDY stole life, destroyed property and claimed land in a place millions of Americans call home. It was also a place I called home for 20 years.

New York City was the place I moved after college to start a business. Along the way, I met my husband on the Jersey Shore, fell in love with the Hudson River Valley and delivered our kids at NYU hospital, a hospital that a few years later would save our son's life. I tolerated the winter and luxuriated in the autumn beauty of the eastern seaboard, with long warm days and a painter's palette on every tree.

Watching Sandy devastate my weekend haunt of Bayhead, N.J., flood my family's home on the Hudson River and force evacuation of the hospital so important to us was nearly too much to take. And, this was looking in from an outsider's view.

While the media is largely focused on the physical impact of the storm, there is also a much less-discussed fallout — the psychological impact on millions of adults and children. After the water has receded and the emergency workers have gone home, there is the lingering memory of the howling winds, the creaking and cracking of trees, and the fear of the powerful storm.

On Nov. 6, Pauline W. Chen, M.D. wrote in the New York Times: "For three decades now, health care experts have been studying the effects of natural disasters and have found that disasters ... left disabling and lasting psychological scars in their wake." This may seem almost obvious, but rarely are psychological impacts covered in the news. Long-term impacts are not the interest of our news as we move onto the next issue du jour.

However, there are long-term results we must face. Our children are growing up in a world with an increased number of disasters, compliments of climate change. How do we talk about the issues with them? Natural disasters of the past had at least one thing going for them — they were simpler to explain: Mother Nature. Now, though, if we are to be honest, we have to say "Mother Nature, along with all of us." Our personal choices, our choices as a society are delivering our kids a new world order.

There is some good news here. Dr. Chen also reports that studies have found a varying impact of disasters, with some of the fallout being mitigated if there was a helpful community response.

Sandy may not be the worst disaster to hit the U.S., but it is a microcosm of our climate change crisis. What impact will our individual, community and societal response to climate change have on our kids' psychology? Will our actions today help mitigate the fallout, both physical and psychological, from future climate disasters for our kids?

I encourage all readers to get involved in the climate issue. My personal response was to start a school-based climate change program, Cool the Earth. We teach kids about climate and to empower them to lead their families in action. Perhaps, most important, kids know we care.

Six years later, 175,000 kids in 23 states have led their families in over 250,000 climate actions. Engage with us! Bring Cool the Earth to your school. Volunteer. Support. Join a climate change movement, any movement. Your kids will thank you for it.

Carleen Cullen is founder and executive director of Cool the Earth, a Marin-based nonprofit started in 2006.